Duck in Wellies: West Coast - Part 2 (Franz Josef)

Yesterday I didn’t have the time to upload pictures from my hike on the Franz Josef Glacier.

The Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers are the big tourist draws in the area. You can look at, photograph, hike on, climb up or be helicoptered onto them at a price to suit almost every budget. I chose to do a full day hike, which gave a bit over 5 hours actually on the glacier and the chance to walk quite far up the accessible section.

The glacier has been in retreat over the last few years, leaving behind a steep-sided valley littered with moraine. This is because the snowfall in recent winters hasn’t been enough to push the front of the glacier further down in preparation for melting during the summer months. The guides were quite concerned about what the next few years would hold as even over the course of this summer the glacier has retreated significantly and a large whole had just opened up in one part of the face. Apparently it was almost unrecognisable from how it had looked back in October and there was a risk that the route they maintained onto the glacier would become unusable if the retreat continues.

Despite all of this, the glacier remains an impressive site. As you walk along the valley floor you see a bluish white form up ahead in the valley, but it is almost impossible to judge the scale. It’s only as you get closer you realise what an immense wall of ice you are confronting.

The tour company provides a full set of kit, including crampons. In addition to the guides with each group, they also have a selection of guides along the route cutting out steps and paths with pickaxes and chainsaws. The result of all that hard work is that the group gets pretty far up the glacier and gets to walk through steep crevices of ice and even tunnels of ice. It was pretty hard to capture all of this in photos, it was a spectacular sight and experience.

The whole day was tiring, but the cost included entry into the hot pools opposite where I was staying so I soaked away the effort before a nice big meal in the evening.